Sexual Harrasment Mock Trial

In class we recently finished the first of two mock trials.  This mock trial dealt with sexual harassment.  In it a woman who had recently started working as a trial attorney sued her employer for damages because she felt that the employer hadn't done what it should when she complained that her coworker was created a hostile environment for her.

Essentially the felt that the actions of her coworker, with whom she shared an office, caused her serious emotional stress, and hampered her ability to work well, culminating in her lateral transfer to another bureau.

The big thing about sexual harassment is how vague it is.  Now I think that it is necessarily so, because what one person thinks is harassment, another might not, but this makes deciding on such a case rather difficult.  The woman felt that the actions of her coworker constituted sexual harassment and this was backed up by her poor work performance, her being so stressed as to start seeing a psychologist, and the testimony of an expert.  However, when she went to the EEOC they decided that there wasn't enough to suggest/prove sexual harassment.

After about a week of direct and cross examination of witnesses the jury, myself included, went into deliberation.  The people who argued for the woman said that because she had made it clear that she didn't appreciate the actions of her coworker and that, because those actions continued, we should decide in her favor.  I argued against the woman on this basis:

Besides the main idea of sexual harassment really just being repeated actions that could be interpreted in a sexual nature despite requests for the offending party to stop, what allows the suit to have merit is because the sexual harassment must in some way be shown to have created a hostile environment that makes it difficult for the harassed to continue working.  However I felt that this wasn't the case.  Why? Because the woman had, during her first six months, received a 3/5 on her evaluation and, during her second six months, received a 1/5 on her evaluation I began to think that the 'hostile environment' wasn't caused by sexual harassment, but it was simply the standard work environment and the woman was unable to deal with the stresses involved.  This belief was reinforced by the testimonies of a couple witnesses who said that working as a trial attorney was very difficult and very stressful.  I worked to convince the jury that the woman wasn't a victim of sexual harassment, but was simply unfit to work as a trial attorney and she was blaming her poor performance on her coworker who she didn't get along well with.

In the end the jury was split with 2 for the woman only getting money to cover her medical expenses and everyone else (I think 6) were totally against her.